{"id":44312,"date":"2024-06-24T10:01:09","date_gmt":"2024-06-24T14:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=44312"},"modified":"2024-06-24T10:45:06","modified_gmt":"2024-06-24T14:45:06","slug":"bad-movie-monday-cruel-jaws-1995","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/24\/bad-movie-monday-cruel-jaws-1995\/","title":{"rendered":"BAD MOVIE MONDAY: CRUEL JAWS (1995)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>On today\u2019s BAD MOVIE MONDAY review we\u2019re going to tackle another Bruno Mattei joint. This time a Jaws rip-off called, appropriately enough, Cruel Jaws. Don\u2019t worry though because it\u2019s also known as Jaws 5 in some markets. Mattei didn\u2019t get all soft on us in the 90s. He was still trying to sucker people into watching his fake sequels right up until the grunge era.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

You know what though? I\u2019m just going to come out and say it. I like Bruno Mattei. Yeah, he was kind of a scoundrel and a thief, but the man made movies with his heart and with his big huge brass Italian balls. How can I not admire that? Besides, I think this is more of a sequel to Jaws 3D than Jaws: The Revenge ever was. I\u2019ve often said that I unironically like Jaws 3D because it\u2019s kind of great as a not-so-sly parody of the Jaws phenomenon, a phenomenon which was entirely based on supposedly rational people being afraid of finding sharks in places where there are no sharks. Places like, you know, SeaWorld. And so the problem I have with Jaws: The Revenge is that it doesn\u2019t really have anything that makes it stand out. The first Jaws is a thrill ride. Jaws 2 is a great tense thriller, like a slasher movie with a shark. Jaws 3D, like I said, is kind of a fun parody. However, the fourth Jaws is just a generic forgettable sequel and other than some member berries about the first movie and the presence of Lorraine Gary has absolutely nothing to really connect it to the rest of the series. It felt almost like an unsuccessful legacy sequel made thirty years too early. This movie, on the other hand, at least feels spiritually cohesive to the Jaws series. It\u2019s a big bold silly mess and it\u2019s refreshingly not ashamed of that.\"\"<\/a><\/span>SYNOPSIS<\/strong>
\nCruel Jaws can be entirely summed up as \u201cHulk Hogan fights Jaws.\u201d I know I sound like I\u2019m pulling your leg but, no, that\u2019s basically the gist of it. You have the corrupt mayor that wants to keep the beaches open no matter how many mangled bodies they find floating in on the tide. You have Hulk Hogan as the owner of an aquarium that he\u2019s on the verge of losing because he owes back rent to the corrupt mayor, You have the mayor\u2019s jock son bullying Hulk Hogan\u2019s son. You have a lot of people running around with dynamite and helicopters. You have whispers of a sinister and secret US Navy experiment. Horny teens. Dolphins. This movie\u2019s got a little bit of everything. It\u2019s all incredibly dumb, but it\u2019s a fun kind of dumb.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>THOUGHTS DURING THE MOVIE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cruel Jaws was released in 1995, but it looks like it was shot in 1983. The film grain, the lighting, even some of the actors\u2019 appearance seem from a decade before. This is a good thing. I never liked the slicker look of 90s films.<\/p>\n

The shark puppet is not that bad. I mean, sure, it\u2019s fake looking and nearly completely immobile and it doesn\u2019t match any of the stock footage of sharks they used and it\u2019s the wrong size for a tiger shark, and uh… Actually, it\u2019s kind of terrible. Still, they tried. Well, they probably tried. Maybe they just bought an inflatable shark pool toy. I dunno. I wasn\u2019t there after all.<\/p>\n

Yes, I realize the main character is called \u201cDag\u201d and that he\u2019s played by Richard Dew, but I\u2019m going to keep calling Hulk Hogan throughout this review anyway because I am very childish.<\/p>\n

Even if you hate this movie, you can\u2019t hate the fact that the little girl who plays Hulk Hogan\u2019s daughter Susy got to swim with real dolphins. That\u2019s a lovely experience for her. So if this movie has any value to me at all, it\u2019s in the fact that a kid got to have a fun happy memory that will last a lifetime.<\/p>\n

This movie contains my TWO favourite tropes: \u201cThe beaches are going to stay OPEN!\u201d and \u201cIf we don\u2019t come up with the money soon, we\u2019re gonna lose the house!\u201d Oh man. You can never go wrong with those.<\/p>\n

Remember that scene in Jaws 2 where a girl tries to chase away the shark that\u2019s attacking her boat by pouring gasoline on it? It\u2019s recreated for this movie in the dumbest way possible. In the original, her actions are arguably stupid but what else was she supposed to do? A massive shark was ripping her boat apart and she\u2019d just seen her friend get killed. It was a desperate act. In Cruel Jaws, the boat is in no actual danger and the girl just pours a hundred gallons of gasoline all over herself and everyone around her, with not a single drop of it ever touching the shark. This is quickly followed by one of the other guys on the boat inexplicably shooting off a flare instead of grabbing that can of liquid death out of her hands and going “Whadafuckareyoudoing????” as I would have done.<\/p>\n

At some point one of the characters exclaims \u201cHe\u2019s gotta be over EIGHT METERS long!!!\u201d because that\u2019s how American talk innit?<\/p>\n

They actually try to \u201cfish\u201d for the shark using a big rope and a hook with meat on it TWICE, and both times the people fishing either don\u2019t let go of the rope or don\u2019t cut the rope when the sharks starts to reel them in. I was going to say that the number of people who die stupidly in this film is unrealistic, but then I remembered that they’re from Florida.<\/p>\n

The shark in the movie is a Tiger Shark and it\u2019s very obvious that the filmmakers called it that because it makes it sound more scary. Because real Tiger Sharks are small and stealthy, the exact opposite of the shark in the film.<\/p>\n

The Star Wars theme being played, more like plagiarized, as our heroes set off to find the shark is the perfect cherry on top of this shit sundae.<\/p>\n

WAS IT REALLY A BAD MOVIE?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Does it matter? Do we care?\u00a0 HULK HOGAN IS FIGHTING JAWS! Lighten up and just enjoy the ride. Life is too short to legitimately complain about this trash. Bruno Mattei was a human with beautiful human flaws, and he sure seemed to love American movies. That he was a thief was a bad thing and I wish he had been more original, but I forgive him. He died in 2007, and one must not speak ill of the dead. Especially when their worst sins involve ripping off a couple of Hollywood big shots like Steven Spielberg and James Cameron. I can look past that. Cruel Jaws is Mattei\u2019s film. It\u2019s everything he loved about blockbuster movies recorded in 35mm for all to see. So even though I may frown upon his very loose interpretation of copyright I still love him for sharing the things that he loved with the rest of us.<\/p>\n

CRUEL JAWS is a 1995 horror film starring Richard Dew as Dag Soerensen, David Luther as Francis Berger, George Barnes, Jr. as Samuel Lewis, Scott Silveria as Bob Soerensen, and Kristen Urso as Susy Soerensen. It was written by Robert Feen, Bruno Mattei and Linda Morrison, and it was directed by Bruno Mattei.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On today\u2019s BAD MOVIE MONDAY review we\u2019re going to tackle another Bruno Mattei joint. This time a Jaws rip-off called, appropriately enough, Cruel Jaws. Don\u2019t worry though because it\u2019s also known as Jaws 5 in some markets. Mattei didn\u2019t get all soft on us in the 90s. He was still trying to sucker people into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3070],"tags":[3414,3421,987],"class_list":["post-44312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-badmoviemonday","tag-bruno-mattei","tag-jaws","tag-steven-spielberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44312"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44326,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44312\/revisions\/44326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}